RANDOM READINGS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1672, 8 February 1917, Page 4

RANDOM READINGS.

“ODD” SUPERSTITIONS,

It has been wisely remarked that an ancient and universal belief is not to be lightly ignored; there must be “something in it.” Odd numbers have always and everywhere been held in peculiar reverence, and if that is mere superstition, then it only proves that despite our civilisation we are still superstitious.

A hen is always given an odd number of eggs to be hatched. Why! There is no reason at all, except superstition. Salutes from warships, forts, etc., arc always given in odd numbers, yet no valid reason can be adduced. It is a remnant of the old “odd numbers are lucky” superstition.

Virgil records all sorts of (‘harms and spells practised round odd numbers —never even ones. And we still, after two failures, make another attempt, and murmur hopefully : “Third time lucky!” The old fully: “Third time lucky!” The odd number again; and the old superstition !

Seven is the favourite Biblical number, and old divines taught that it held a mystical perfection. It’s of the Trinity —an odd number again. Falstaff, in the “Merry Wives,” is entrapped for the third time. He himself said, “They say there is a divinity in odd numbers” because of the old belief that the odd time would be lucky.

Physicians of other days always insisted that “bleedings” should be in odd numbers —one, three, live, etc., and never an even one.

130 MILES OF STEEL RIBBON

One of the eliief sources of strength in big guns lies in the miles and miles of steel ribbon with which the tube is reinforced. This ribbon one-sixteenth of an inch thick and about a quarter of an inch wide, is wound round the tube or core of the. great cannon. On a 12-inch gun about 130 miles of the ribbon is wound, a weight of 15 tons. The ribbon has a tensile strength of 100 tons per square inch.

From the time the ingots of steel, some of which are nearly 100 tons in weight, are taken from the steel foundry, where they are east as octagonal masses, to when, as a complete weapon, the gun is tested to prove ‘its power and accuracy, scores of intricate processes are gone through. After being taken from the foundry the mass of steel is dealt with by the machine shop, where a hole is made in each ingot in what is known as a trepanning machine. Under a hydraulic press of 10,000 tons power, it is next forged to reduce it to a tube or jacket of the required length and thickness of metal, thereon it is passed to one of the large machine shops, there to he finished to internal and external diameters in machines ranging up to 180 ft. in length.

The tube is next reheated and tempered or hardened in oil baths which are under the ground level, and of' great depth, so that the tube may be suspended vertically in a bath while the heat is steadily maintained at the required temperature by carefully controlled gas jets.

The tube is lowered into and lifted out of these baths by “Goliath” cranes, capable of dealing with weights of 100 tons and with tubes 75 ft. in length. The same plant is used in the subsequent operation of building up by the shrinking-on process of the various tubes or jackets required to form the complete gun, the outer tubes being heated before being lilted over the inner tubes, so that with the subsequent contraction due to the reduction of temperature the outer tube tightly tits the inner.

The innermost tube of all is inserted as one of the later operations, and in very accurate machines the bore is rifled in order that the shot as it leaves the gun will have the gyratory motion essential to accuracy of tire.